Sainte Barbe

This is early Goya, painted around 1773 when he was still in his late twenties, working in his home region of Aragon years before the royal court and the dark late work. He had recently come back from a trip to Italy, and it shows. Saint Barbara stands calm and monumental, like a piece of classical sculpture, holding the martyr's palm in one hand. In her legend she was a nobleman's daughter, so Goya crowns her and dresses her in bright, thickly painted cloth. Her face is not invented. It echoes a Roman statue of the goddess Juno that he had studied and drawn in his sketchbook while he was in Italy.